The Croft Health and Fitness

It may be common knowledge that losing weight helps to reduce the risk of diabetes, but recent research appears to put that beyond any doubt.

Recent research appears to prove that shedding weight is the most important factor in reducing diabetes risk for elevated-risk, severely obese individuals.

In short, Weight Loss helps lower the risk of becoming a sufferer of Diabetes mellitus

Those participating in the intensive lifestyle intervention part of the Diabetes mellitus Prevention Scheme, the aim of which was eliminating fat with the target of decreasing weight by 7%, decreased their risk of developing diabetes by 58 percent a period of 36 months, stated Dr. Richard F. Hamman at the scheme’s control center at George Washington Uninversity, situated in Rockville, Maryland, USA..

On the first stages of the program all members of the study group were technically obese and had reduced ability to adequately process glucose, which left them with a elevated chance of becoming a sufferer of diabetes mellitus.

Another target of the intervention was to get those participating to do a small amount of exercise for a duration of at least 2.5 hours each week, the diabetes specialists report in their article detailed in the September 2006 issue of Diabetes Care Publication.

Doctor Hamman and his researchers were looking for factors that were the most helpful in reducing the risk of diabetes, losing weight, elevated physical exercise or lowered fat intake. Participants reduced their fat to less than 25 percent of their total calories injested, and diminished the total calorie consumption if they did not lose enough weight by just lowering the fat.

Shedding weight was the most important factor in reducing risk of diabetes mellitus, whilst lowering the fat in the diet and increasing exercise helped those involved reduce weight, and physical exercise helped them keep the weight off, the diabetes experts stated.

Another somewhat alarming report seems to suggest that sleep deprivation and diabetes may be connected.

It seems that a busy life style that causes you to lose sleep may also have you heading towards diabetes mellitus.

But don’t be tempted to have too many ‘lie ins’, because excessive sleep could lead to just the same end result.

This is the somewhat unusual outcome of a recent study that suggests too little or too much sleep may cause the blood sugar illness, at least for oldtimers.

“This is one additional piece of information bolstering the common recommendation for sleeping seven to eight hours a night,” reported study co-producer Dr. Daniel Gottlieb, of Boston University.

Dr.Gottlieb and his colleagues studied detailed stats covering the health of nearly 1500 members of a previous research that covered the cardiovascular effects of sleep disorders that also affected breathing. those participating were middle aged to elderly.

The goal of the doctors was to see if they could find a factor that connected sleep issuesand impaired ability to metabolize blood sugar, a symptom of diabetes. They state their findings in this week’s issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Compared with the participants who slept seven to eight hours, the participants who had less than 5 hours sleep were 2.5 times more likely to have diabetes. The rate of diabetes was somewhat lower for those who achieved 6 hours sleep.

The diabetes rate was also higher for the participants who slept for longer than 9 hours.